


right armor, wrong body

by meios



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Body Worship, Dragon Age Kink Meme, Gender Dysphoria, M/M, trans!Hawke - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 19:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4679312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I just don’t understand why this—” He glances down his front, at the guilty parties, and then back up, “—couldn’t match my feelings, my—how I see myself, how I want to be, how I know I want to be. You… Anders, you deserve—”</p>
            </blockquote>





	right armor, wrong body

**Author's Note:**

> I largely wrote how Hawke thinks and reacts to his dysphoria from my own, as I am constantly confronted with the fact that I may not pass as a male, and that that really troubles me, et cetera. As I inch closer and closer to possibly identifying as a transboy, the subject of my body fills me with such dread that I would rather not think about it than to address it.
> 
> This was difficult for me to write, if only because I could not find the words to put forward just how terrifying it is to look in the mirror and see nothing close to what you feel you should look like, what you feel you should be.

Hawke is naked, and he feels wrong.

  
All lean muscles and tan lines, war paint streaked across his nose, down his arms, covering up freckles like glitter covers smiles, and he feels, probes with unforgiving hands, the mirror looking back at him as if this is his fault, as if the lack of parts between his legs, the breasts he binds, the lack of hair on his face—as if all of that is his doing.

 

He places his hands over the areola, over the nipples, pressing them against his chest, flattening them. He would look better, he thinks, like this, turning to hide the berth of his hips, the scars from the dagger, blood like magic running through his veins and out of his staff.

 

Runs a hand through copper hair, messy, shaggy. Hawke pinches at his stomach, at his bottom, at his thighs; he does not bother stopping even as the door opens and closes. He does not look up, knows who it is from the smell that accompanies him: ink and parchment, lyrium potions, Darktown—like rats and bandages and death, but also like soap and linen and nice things. Nice things. Like Anders.

 

Anders’ hands are calloused from how tightly he holds his staff in battle, white-knuckled, blisters never remaining so for long. He covers Hawke’s hands with his own, regardless: intertwines their fingers and brings them back to rest against the muscle of Hawke’s stomach.

 

“Another bad day?” asks the healer, lips pressed to a shoulder, strong, slightly trembling. A nod. “Want to talk about it?” When the other mage shakes his head, there is only a squeeze of the hands, a gentle kiss in response.

 

Hawke is naked, and he feels wrong.

 

He says as much, watches Anders meet his gaze in the mirror, all brilliant cerulean and straw, and there is a warmth in the pit of Hawke’s stomach that always stirs when Anders presses close, skins touching, fingers brushing like breaths stolen. “I just don’t understand why this—” He glances down his front, at the guilty parties, and then back up, “—couldn’t match my feelings, my—how I see myself, how I want to be, how I _know_ I want to be. You… Anders, you deserve—”

 

“Don’t,” responds Anders, breathing a kiss into the spot where Hawke’s neck meets his shoulder, bristle of his stubble bringing forth goosebumps. There is still sunshine peaking through the edges of their curtains, highlighting dust in the air, the wisps of hair escaping from Anders’ ponytail. His mouth journeys up and then across, and then down again. “Do you know what I love about you?”

 

“Besides my atrociously good looks and my adorable dog?”

 

He snorts. “Besides that.”

 

Hawke shakes his head, no.

 

“I love the strength you carry,” Anders begins, “all physicality until you open your mouth, too nice and too _good_ even when you’re furious, softness like that’s all you’ve known, like that’s all you’ll ever care to know—despite the blood magic, doesn’t matter how I feel about it, and despite the loss, the trauma, the grief.”

 

He kisses the shell of Hawke’s ear, stopping at the gold ring that Isabela had put through the lobe months ago; pale hands disentangle themselves from tan ones, roaming up thick muscle, tracing deep scars.

 

Anders says, “You are so good,” like a prayer. “I don’t deserve _you_ , but I’ll work every second of my life to earn you, to keep you like you keep me, safe and sound regardless of the arguments, the tempers, the Chantry and the Templars.”

 

Hawke lets himself be turned, pulled toward the chair near the fireplace; he sits, Anders follows, curling in his lap. Feather touches and wispy kisses, the healer’s forehead pressed to the other’s, and it is only here where Hawke allows himself to touch, trace the slight gauntness of Anders’ cheek, curl his finger under a scratchy chin for a kiss.

 

Gentle, always gentle nowadays.

 

There are fingertips brushing along his collarbones, dipping down to Hawke’s chest, stopping only when the man stiffens, an ashamed blush spreading across his face. “I won’t touch you there if you don’t want me to,” says Anders, understanding, instead bringing an index finger to the side of Hawke’s jaw.

 

“I-it’s not that,” he murmurs. He does not look up from where he stares at the armrest, plush and burgundy. “They should just—”

 

Anders waits, but there is no conclusion, simply a trembling bottom lip, ears scarlet.

 

There is silence when the healer wraps his arms around Hawke’s neck, pulls him into a hug, awkwardly situated, but still enough to spur thicker arms to return the embrace, and there is so much left unsaid, so much undone and forsaken and the estate is so quiet, like the dead are alive here and the alive are dead, and Hawke is just a shell of his former self, less soft-spoken and more just soft, filtered with pretty songs and words that the Veil may sing.

 

And Hawke is naked, and he feels wrong, lets Anders dress him with as much care as possible, lets him situate the bra band over his chest, careful not to touch skin more than needed. And Hawke smiles a little when Anders brings tan hands to his lips, kisses the palms.

 

“I love you,” says the healer, matter-of-factly, making sure that Hawke looks at back at him as he says it. “You are the man I am in love with. You are the man I will forever be in love with.”

 

The beginnings of a smirk ghost his face, all freckles and scars and deep, forgotten promises. “And if someone says otherwise?”

 

“Well,” Anders snorts, pressing his nose against Hawke’s cheek, “they’ll be buried so far under Sundermount that only the dwarves will find them.”

 

A quiet laugh. Full lips to a full kiss, soft touches in golden light.


End file.
